Category Archives: blogging

August: By Request…

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It’s been a while since I’ve opened up the request lines around here. With July rolling to a close, the summer doldrums well in place, and realizing that I can’t write about sequester and furlough every day and expect 99% of you to keep reading, it seems like as good a time as any to let someone else do a bit of the heavy lifting involved in topic selection.

11182-i-love-question-markThe rules are simple and straightforward:

1. You pose a question or identify a topic of your choice. Be ruthless, I’m looking for a challenge. Just don’t ask about math. I don’t do math.

2. I carefully hand craft a response and post it on jeffreytharp.com for your amusement.

I’m tempted to say that nothing is off limits, but there’s not a chance in hell that I’m giving you jerks passwords or account information just because you were froggy enough to ask for it. With a very few limitations, though, the gloves are off so feel free to pick your topics and ask your questions with reckless abandon.

I’ll keep the request line open for the entire month of August (or until I get tired of it), so the sooner you leave me a comment, the sooner I can get on with the serious work of writing a sarcastic response.

It’s a new year…

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It’s a new year, or at least it’s a new year in the archives. This morning the calendar rolled forward to 2008 and I’m happy to deliver up for you the first five posts from January. If I’m remembering the year right, it was one of those perfect storms of family obligations, trying to slog through to the end of grad school, slowly starting to realize that I wasn’t as in love with work as I thought I was, and the usual malcontentery that you find here on a regular basis. Not all of those themes come through in this first set of posts, but that should give you the flavor of what was banging around in my head when they first appeared on ye olde MySpace blog.

Each of today’s archive posts first appeared over five years ago now. It’s remarkable how some things change and some feel like they’re in exactly the same place they were 2000 days ago. Life’s funny like that.

Without any further suspense, go ahead and check out the archive for January 2008.

Bloggers in love…

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I read alot of blogs, but there are only a handful that I check on a regular basis. Two of my favorites are soooooo clearly hot to trot for each other. They’re bloggers in love. Which, from what I can tell based on the recent spate of posting, has much in common with teenagers in love. There’s plenty of cross posting, comments, and reblogging from one another’s sites. There’s plenty of not-so-subtile flirting flying in from every direction. Yeah, it’s alot like high school except the writing is better – which I suppose makes it not really like high school at all. Still, I suppose it’s better than pulling pigtails and running away.

Anyway, rather than reaching for something original this morning, I thought I’d plug my two favorite bloggers in love today. Go check out Becca at 25ToFly and the Adam at Chowderhead. You’ll be glad you did.

25,000…

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Sometime while I was at work today, jeffreytharp.com rolled over the 25,000 view mark. That’s pretty impressive for some random guy posting whatever pops into his head on a website that doesn’t do any actual advertising. The internet never ceases to amaze me with the reach of its long arms. In that 25,000 visits, every continent is represented (except Antarctica). Not a bad voice at all for a kid from down the Crick.

I started blogging in June 2006, wandered around through a host of platforms from MySpace to Blogger and finally here to WordPress. It started as an occasional post, morphed into posts showing up a few times a week, and now a new post shows up, generally, every day. I’ve learned more about writing from keeping this blog and its predecessors than I ever learned in school. I’ve learned more about myself that I thought I wanted to know too. I’ve learned that sometimes I pull my punches and that despite a life largely lived online, there are still elements that I’m never going to feel comfortable making available for public consumption. I use to feel guilty about keeping some part of myself separate from the blog, but I’m past that now.

After seven years of writing, I’m a bit surprised that I haven’t run out of things to say. I’m even more surprised that there are people out there who are legitimately interested in what’s going to show up on these pages next. For a guy not exactly known for his humility, I’ve found that to be incredibly humbling.

For good or bad, every word written on these pages is mine. They each reflect the moment in time that they were written. For those 629 people currently following jeffreytharp.com and for those yet to find this little endeavor, I really do thank you from the bottom of my heart. Even though I’ve said I don’t write for an audience, I have to admit that it’s far more entertaining with everyone along with me for the ride. Let’s see how things look from the 50,000 view level.

Truth to power…

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I’m use to getting form letters from my elected representatives. Writing them directly might not count for much in today’s world, but the right to petition our government for redress of grievances is one of the hallmarks of the American democracy. Even as one voice among 300 million it’s not a right that I’m willing to let quietly die or to forgo simply because it doesn’t feel effective.

Like others of a certain age, I also use Facebook and Twitter to make my opinion known. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, these messages to power go unremarked and barely noticed… Which is why I was surprised today to get a reply to my last post on Representative Andy Harris’ Facebook page. It might have had a bit of the form letter flavor, but it at least meant that a staffer had to take the time to note my opinion and provide the appropriate response. That was unexpected.

The government writ large understands two basic things: money and popular opinion. Until I hit that elusive Powerball jackpot, I won’t be hiring my own lobbyist, but the one thing I can do, loud and long, is let my opinion be known at every opportunity. I know there are plenty of people out there who thing I should shut my pie hole and be glad I have a job (even if it is part time for the next 9 weeks), or think that the typical bureaucrat is overpaid, or think the whole damned machine needs to be torn down. That’s fine. We all know that opinions are like a certain anatomical orifice.

I expect and encourage others to have their own opinions, but know now that despite any thoughts to the contrary I will continue to make mine heard through every avenue available to me. To borrow a quote from one of my favorites, I strive to “Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

Sometimes I’m going to fall well short of that goal, but I’ll be here as long as I can hold out, raising hell and telling truth, as I see it, to power.

A short December…

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Yeah in and year out, December regularly has the lowest readership of any month of the year. Everyone is busy and that’s to be expected while they’re attempting to fill the world with their personal version of holiday cheer. I mean, I can’t really expect everyone to drop their Christmas planning just because a new post or two show up on the internet. The logical result is that December became something of a dumping ground around here. Since the numbers weren’t on my side, posts got less frequent, shorter, and weren’t exactly “A” level material in a lot of cases. I like to think more recent Decembers have seen that trend reverse a bit as I try to keep the focus on delivering quality pith every day of the year.

December 2007 was seriously short on posts. It looks like I was only managing to get my act together every three or four days back then… and what did show up was often super short and lacked the snark that I think helps define jeffreytharp.com.

What does that mean to you? Well, instead of dribbling them out over two weeks, I’ve taken the unprecedented step of posting the entire month’s worth of material in one go. With these 10 posts, we can bring 2007 to an end. Next sunday, I hope you’ll join me as we launch headlong into 2008. With only ten months and 14,000 words of archive material left to post, this little project is closer to its end than its beginning. I still think it’s been a worthwhile effort if only to remind me about how ridiculous our own pasts can sound when we have the benefit of hindsight.

Racing towards the end of the year…

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I’ve spent the last twenty minutes blowing the dust of five posts from the archives and couldn’t help but notice that we’ve worked almost all of the way through 2007. The last of the November posts are up and December has made it’s first appearance. Time flies when you’re having fun. Especially when you’re posting material from before the point when you got the ridiculous idea that posting every day was a good idea.

This week is the usual assortment of minutia, complaints about the onrushing Christmas holiday, and a fun little post from a time in my life when I was still professionally ambitious. Those always make me smile. It never ceases to amaze me how much your Give-a-Shit level can change in six short years.

Enjoy the archive posts and be sure to check back tomorrow for brand new gripes and complaints.

Why I like Sundays…

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The best part of these little Sunday trips down memory lane is that every now and then you run across a post describing an experience you completely forgot about. This morning was one of Its_Dead_Jimthose days. After posting four admittedly mundane posts from 2007, the fifth turned out to be a real gem: The saga of my first flat screen TV purchase and the hilarity that ensued. Sure, it sounds like another run of the mill “what I did today” posts, but give it a look and I think you’ll agree that it’s worth the read.

Without the need for further introduction, I give you mid-November 2007 from the Archives.

What Annoys Jeff this Week: The Movie

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WAJTW 2012 - Cover ImageOK. I lied. It’s not a movie, but it is a book… and that’s like a movie, except for the part where there aren’t any moving pictures or dialog. You can still look mindlessly at the screen while jamming your face full of over-buttered popcorn and overpriced snowcaps, so it has that going for it.

I’ve been posting over the last few days as What Annoys Jeff this Week: 2012 in Review becomes available through the various retail sites, but since nothing is ever official until it shows up on the blog, I just wanted to let you know that you can now get your very own copy from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

For those using some of the more esoteric e-readers, WAJTW: 2012 in Review will also be available (through Smashwords distribution) from the iTunes, Sony, and Kobo eBook stores in a few weeks.

Update from the archives…

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Since it’s sunday morning and dinner is happily doing its thing in the crock pot, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to load up this week’s update from the archives. Today’s offering includes the last post from October and the first four from November 2007. There are no epic rants this go around, but they lose dramatic effect if one pops up every week, don’t you think?

Today’s posts also mark a milestone in the “from the archive” series. There are now less than a year’s worth of back posts waiting to get transferred here to WordPress. It’s bittersweet. I’m sure I enjoy this weekly trip to the recesses of my brain as much if not more than anyone. I’ll be a little sad to see them come to an end.

Enjoy this morning’s posts and remember we’ll be back with poppin’ fresh content tomorrow.